They buried the second mate in the conventional sea manner, Marr reading the simple service from the Bible.
Stirling saw the sack-sewn body plunge into the icy waters of the Bering Sea, and replaced his cap when the last ripples had died. He turned and glanced upward at Marr, watching the skipper fold the Book and look over the rail. The whale lay alongside with only a slight hump to mark its bulk, and in the centre of this hump a harpoon had been thrust. The stout iron, of Swedish construction, was bent and twisted, and to it was fastened a bight of inch hemp which had held throughout the struggle.
Purple night was falling when Stirling had the whale’s body in a position for cutting in. More irons had been driven home, lines were brought aboard and fastened to cleats, a strong hawser was passed about the giant flukes.
Cutting in a whale to Stirling was like peeling an apple. It had been one of the greatest joys the seas had granted to him. It was the culmination of months of preparation and searching. The value of a head of bone was well up in the thousands, and Stirling estimated the length of the whale to be all of seventy feet. The bone, therefore, being in proportion, he expected slabs from the upper jaw to reach fifteen feet.
The waist of the ship was cleared of riffraff and dunnage; a strong whale tackle was rigged between fore and mainmast, one line of this tackle being wound about the foreward winch. The other end was carried down the cutting-in stage and hitched to a slice of blubber which had been peeled from the whale’s neck. This slice of blubber was called the blanket piece.
Kanakas climbed then over the slippery body and started work with blubber spades and axes. They severed the strip, as the winch was started, the whale rolled over and exposed an open cut which banded its neck. Into this the crew slashed until the backbone was reached. They then climbed aboard, after rigging a second line through a purchase in the upper jaw.
"Hoist away!" ordered Stirling. A watch tackle creaked, the line tightened, and the upper jaw of the monster came aboard and was swung over a spot in the waist, lowering to position when the tackle was slacked. The carcass, useless now, was cast adrift by cutting the lines. It drifted to leeward where it was soon surrounded by polar bears and screeching sea gulls.